The Colony of Saint Domingue :: History american Essays

The Colony of Saint Domingue In looking at the revolution of the slaves from the colony of Saint Domingue, we must consider several different aspects that helped to create the atmosphere that was suitable enough for this revolution to take hold. The "Eden of the Western World" (Beckles 402) that produced almost half of the sugar and coffee consumed in the Americas and Europe was soon to become the stage of intensely bloody, deadly battles. In order to better understand how and why this revolution, that has been called "one of the few revolutions in world history that have had such profound consequences" (Shepherd 402), could have happened we must look at who was living in the colony at this time period. In the late 1780’s the French colony of Saint Domingue consisted of what is primarily know as the "three-tier" structure, which was what generally existed in these sugar colonies. Race as well as economic standing and social position separated the three groups that made up this structure. The whites of the colony were surprisingly enough not a tight knit group even despite the fact that they were by far the minority, in terms of numbers on the island. The whites were split up into two distinct groups that drew their lines by wealth. The rich white planters was the group of whites that owned the plantations and the slaves and represented the unified support for slavery, because of the fact that they depended on it for their wealth. It should be duly noted that this group of whites was at this time extremely unhappy with their mother country of France, and were already disobeying her regularly in order to trade more cheaply with the United States. The second group of whites was obviously the poor whites who held simple everyday jobs, but despite the fact that they were not wealthy slave owners, they were certainly supporters of the anti-black feelings. The next group that we will look at is that of the black slaves. The black slaves, as was noted above, vastly outnumbered the free whites, and it can be seen here in this accompanying chart, that by the time of the French Revolution the black slaves outnumbered the free by almost 10: 1. This vast difference in numbers is not something without significance to the revolution, because it represented the apex of the discrepancy, and made the apparent balance of power seem less and less clear.